The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery was officially born on January 18, 1985. The first issue of TIGHAR Tracks was published later that month and was mailed to about a dozen charter members. Volume 1, Number 1 didn’t look much like the magazine you’re now reading. It consisted of one photocopied 11 x 17 sheet of paper folded into four pages. The text was typed and the artwork was done with rub-on letters and pasted-up line drawings. There were no photographs.

There were two more issues of TIGHAR Tracks that first year. Volume 1, Number 2 was on slightly heavier paper and Number 3 was a double Summer/Fall issue with eight pages. The first photo appeared on the cover of Volume 2, Number 1 in January of 1986. It was a Japanese “Betty” bomber overgrown with tropical vines and it accompanied an editorial statement of TIGHAR’s philosophy and purpose to save historic aircraft from “the teeth of time and the hands of mistaken zeal.” But TIGHAR Tracks was still an eight-page photocopied newsletter.

By Volume 2, Number 3 – the Summer/Fall issue of 1986 – TIGHAR Tracks had become a 12 page booklet, still photocopied, but stapled and with a heavier cover on colored paper. An experiment with a real magazine format came with Volume 3, Number 2 in the summer of 1987. Sixteen type-set pages with two-color printing and high quality photos and graphics made for an attractive publication, but it proved to be too expensive and in 1989 we went back to newsletter format while retaining the magazine-style lay out.

Volume 5 #1

Volume 8 #1

Every issue featured a different second color (brown, green, blue, etc.) until Volume 8, Number 1 & 2 in March of 1992 when we first used the blue and silver format which has become a TIGHAR trademark. By 1992 the length of the “shorter” newsletter was up to a dozen pages and with Volume 8, Number 4 we adopted the magazine-style cover and lay out conventions now in use.

Chronic shortages of time and money have meant a sporadic publication schedule. This was especially true this past year when two simultaneous expeditions in the Pacific and the lack of a sponsor for the magazine’s productions costs meant putting all of 1999’s work into one giant issue. In 2000 we plan to return to a more normal schedule but we still need to find a sponsor to cover the $5,000 quarterly production costs.

For long-time members who are wondering if their collection of back issues is complete, here’s a listing of what has been published: